


The Centaur

by Sineala



Category: The Eagle of the Ninth - Rosemary Sutcliff
Genre: Centaurs, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 17:39:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/827001
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Tenth Legion's primus pilus and its new tribune embark on a possibly-ill-advised quest for a possibly-legendary being, in the course of which they grow to know each other rather better than before.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Centaur

**Author's Note:**

  * For [motetus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/motetus/gifts).



> So apparently when I ask what kind of Exciting Judaean Adventure Hieronimianus and Uncle Aquila should go on, and osprey_archer tells me that they should look for centaurs, I... just end up writing that. So this is her fault, really. I hope you like centaurs. And hound metaphors!
> 
> Thanks to osprey_archer, Island_of_Reil, and Carmarthen for beta and general enabling.

"Say that again, Centurion."

Claudius Hieronimianus, the youngest and most junior of the six broad-striped tribunes of the Tenth Legion Fretensis, rubbed at the bridge of his nose in a vain attempt to stave off the incipient headache. He hoped he had misheard the man. But when he opened his eyes, his skull still throbbed, and the soldier still stood before him. This much at least was not a dream.

He had been in Judaea for less than a month, and because of that he almost suspected the man of making a joke. Certainly he knew that the ordinary soldiers played such tricks on their own newcomers as a matter of routine -- some hapless man would be sent to the quartermaster to ask for this item or that, generally a thing that either could not be had in camp, did not exist at all, or sounded like an obscene word if you said it quickly enough. But these jests, he thought, did not cross the boundaries between enlisted men and officers of senatorial rank.

Furthermore, the Tenth's primus pilus would hardly be a man to mislead him in these affairs. Aquila was a trustworthy soldier -- or so Tribune Verinus, taking pity on his obvious inexperience, had told him -- and not the sort to simply invent tales. Oh, Verinus had said that Aquila apparently had an irrepressible streak of lightheartedness in him, but he wouldn't ever have made primus pilus had he been a liar.

Hieronimianus steepled his fingers and regarded the primus pilus across the desk. Aquila was a huge man, but not uncouth and terrifying in the manner of the barbarians; rather, his size made him seem almost kindly, favored by the immortal ones. His dark hair was shot through liberally with gray, and his face was well-lined. Likely he was due for retirement, or perhaps one further promotion.

Aquila was beginning to eye him in a weary manner, as if he could not believe he was being asked to repeat a perfectly clear statement. He was too much a veteran to fidget as he stood, but the set of his head suggested that he might like to.

No, a man such as this could not knowingly lie to his commander. But that still did not explain the message, not in the slightest.

Perhaps someone had lied to Aquila. Ah, that was a thought -- but he did not seem particularly gullible, either.

Or perhaps Hieronimianus had simply misheard. Yes, that was the simplest explanation.

Aquila coughed. "Sir, it is as I said. Sabinus reported to me that he... saw a centaur. In the woods, sir."

It occurred to him then that there were other reasons for the report to be inaccurate.

Hieronimianus sighed. "And how drunk was he?"

"Not at all, sir." Aquila drew himself up to his full height, and his gaze almost implied that he considered the suggestion an affront. "He swears he was sober. And if Sabinus swears a thing, sir, I believe him. And it's not just that--"

"Oh?"

Aquila lowered his voice, as if he was aware of how ridiculous the whole thing must sound. "It isn't only him, sir. He gave me four, five names. Men who swear they saw the same thing. A centaur."

It couldn't be true. Oh, certainly the creatures must have once existed -- who could ever have forgotten the tales of them? -- but if they still roamed the earth they would surely prefer wild places, vast undiscovered lands where men would never find them, countries where men had never set foot. They were not simply things that a sentry in the woods could happen across, the way you might find a flower in bloom or a strange rock in your travels.

"It's impossible," he said, flatly.

Aquila did not quite shrug. "I am only reporting the news among the legion, sir, as you had asked."

Well. "Then there is only one thing to do."

"And that is?" Aquila lifted a dubious winged eyebrow, as if he expected Hieronimianus to say _punish the miscreants for their lies._

"We'll have to go find it, of course."

This got a reaction: Aquila's head snapped up in surprise. "We, sir?"

"Yes, you and me," he replied, with the crispness of an order. "Why, Centurion, does this surprise you?"

"Sir," Aquila began, and then halted. Hieronimianus could see him trying not to say _you are half my age, you are as inexperienced as a newborn pup, and I disagree with you more or less on principle_. Then he smiled, or tried to. "I will do as ordered."

"Excellent."

So what if Aquila did not like him? Hieronimianus had no friends to speak of, here, so it was not as if any other man would have been better. And spending a few days in the wilderness hardly required them to enjoy each other's company. Likely there would be nothing at all to see, but if there were a centaur, how could he say he had turned down the chance to see one?

Besides, if there truly _were_ a centaur out there, a tribune and the primus pilus were surely more reliable witnesses than a disorderly bunch of common soldiers.

* * *

Hieronimianus watched morosely as the contents of his satchel began to disperse themselves in the stream. The cup and bowl, the flint and the oil-vials, and of course the extra dagger -- those had all sunk to the bottom right away, settling in among the smooth rocks, but the clothing and the little packets of bucellatum and dried meat floated along the current away from him, taunting him.

He sighed.

"It could have happened to anyone, sir," said Aquila, in a very patient tone that Hieronimianus primarily associated with nurses and other minders of small children. "Do you want me to see what I can retrieve?"

Yes, he thought, but perversely, the answer that came out of his mouth was: "No need, Centurion. I am perfectly capable of managing."

He could handle himself in the woods. He wasn't a complete imbecile.

Shortly thereafter, Hieronimianus discovered that flailing around in the chilly mountain stream to retrieve the gear was nearly as bad as watching it go off in the first place. He did get the bowl and dagger back, though, and that was something.

All the while Aquila was standing on the bank, staring at him with a grave expression, in a way that nevertheless suggested he was laughing quite hard, inwardly.

"You hadn't wanted to take your tunic off first, sir?"

Oh. He was going to freeze like this. Yes, perhaps he should have--

"No," he said, curtly. "I will be well."

Aquila nodded. "As you say, Tribune." His mouth only twitched a little.

* * *

Hieronimianus had resolved not to show any weakness before the primus pilus, but even he could not help shivering at sundown. His clothes were still wet, and he was well aware that it was only going to get worse. He had regained his cloak eventually when it had floated onto some branches, but it too was sopping wet, and they would need to stop and make camp and eat--

His stomach growled, and he remembered, too, that his rations were now useless. Those, he had not been able to catch. He had nothing left to eat.

Aquila, without consulting him, stopped, and began to clear the ground for a little fire.

"Aren't you concerned that--?"

"Yes?" Aquila didn't look up from the pile of kindling.

He felt ridiculous saying it. As if he believed they would find it. "If you build a fire, won't the centaur see us? Or the locals?" There, perhaps if he sounded as if he was more concerned about ordinary men...

Aquila shrugged. "If there is one here, he's probably heard us. Or seen the trail we've been leaving. We aren't exactly subtle, sir. And I'd like to be warm tonight. The locals don't usually trouble us in these woods. But if you'd rather not...?"

The fire sparked, caught, and Aquila blew carefully on the tinder, shielding it from the wind with his cupped hands. He had likely done this a thousand times. Not like Hieronimianus.

"Oh. No, that will serve, then."

In a short while the fire was pleasant enough -- or it would have been if he had been dry. It alone could not warm him. His stomach growled again.

And Aquila was sitting there, wrapped snugly in his warm, dry cloak, even now rummaging through his own bags for his own rations. It was only their first day out, and they had not trapped or shot anything better, so likely it was bucellatum for supper. Ordinarily Hieronimianus hated the tasteless stuff, but deprived as he was, he could feel his mouth beginning to water. He hoped he was not staring.

The biscuit Aquila drew forth looked a little different than the usual. Fuller, perhaps. "Barley bannock. I developed a taste for it, on my last posting. Do you want some?" Aquila crumbled half the bannock into bits on his palm, still not looking up.

He could not. If it meant he was hungry, he would be hungry. It was his first posting, and Hieronimianus would not begin his cursus honorum by begging for scraps from his men like a slave or a cur. There was no need to humiliate himself further.

"No, thank you, Centurion."

Aquila tipped the handful of bannock into his mouth and chewed in silence, then washed the whole thing down with a little jar of posca from his bag. Hieronimianus wrinkled his nose at the sour, rank smell. Posca was for the enlisted men. He had brought wine.

Not that he had that any longer, either.

About halfway through his meal, Aquila stopped and looked up. "When I was about your age, sir, I had my first army post."

Oh, not this. Half of what everyone told him lately seemed to begin _when I was your age_. He gritted his teeth. "Yes, Centurion?"

"I was in Britannia, at Glevum."

He imagined the chill of those winters and shuddered harder. "Barbarian country, I expect?"

"It is a better place than you might think. I am planning on retiring there." Aquila sounded a little defensive, but then he shrugged, all tension gone. "But that was not what I meant to say, sir. I meant to say, I had a hound, when I was there."

"A hound?" Well, at least this would be a different story.

"Yes, sir." Across the fire, Aquila's face softened a little in remembrance. "Named her Marguerita, and a pearl she was, indeed. Best hound I ever had. But it is only -- I would never have found her at all, if she hadn't sought me out. And even then she was half-wild. I think she had been left to fend for herself as a pup, but she knew enough of men to come to the garrison. She feared us, though."

"Did she?"

Aquila nodded. "We'd see her, night after night, this little pale shape, skulking in the shadows, as if she wanted to see us but was too frightened to come any closer. Eventually I had the notion that she might be hungry, but she would not come when I called, not even when I had food in my hands. Not even when it was the meat scraps I could beg from my fellows."

"What did you do?"

"Left it on the ground, of course." Aquila smiled. "Then I'd come back a little later and see that she'd dragged it off and eaten it. Did that for a few days, and then I stayed and waited while she took the food. She was slow to take it at first, and I could see her staring at me, with me still watching her, with her trying to decide whether it was worth it. But she darted out and grabbed the food. Then I did it the next night, and the next. Until she was standing there eating, not minding me."

He could see the shape of the story now, and he was not certain he liked what Aquila was trying to say with this tale. "And then?"

"Then," said Aquila, "I started moving the scraps closer. Not so you would notice. A gradual thing. In a few more days, she was eating at my feet. And then, then -- why, then I fed her from my hands. And she didn't run. And after that she was the most loyal hound you could ever wish for."

"Was there a point to this, Aquila?" The words came out of him stiff and cold.

Aquila's reply, when it came, was soft. "You don't want me to throw barley bannock on the ground, sir."

Did Aquila think he was some scared animal who needed gentling? Did he really? "Men are not beasts, Centurion," he snapped.

"That was my point." Aquila stared evenly at him, but there was a kind of honesty in the gaze, a thing that seemed to him rare and fine. "If there is a thing you want, a thing you need, you can open your mouth and ask for it. You're meant to ask for it. Not just bannock. It's why they give you men who have been twenty years in the army when you're hardly twenty yourself. You're not supposed to be able to divine what to do in every situation, with no experience. How could you? You're supposed to rely on us."

"On you?"

Aquila nodded. "On me." He picked up the rest of the bannock, but did not -- quite -- hold it out. "You could also ask for bannock. That wasn't just an example."

This might, he thought, not be so bad after all.

Hieronimianus cleared his throat. "Then, Aquila, if you are certain you don't want the rest of that bannock for yourself, might I...?"

Aquila grinned and pressed the bannock into his hands. Then their fingers touched, and he yelped. "Ah, your hands are like ice! Here--"

Aquila had stood up and unpinned his own cloak before Hieronimianus even realized what he was doing.

"No!" he said, waving him off. "It's fine, really, I don't need your--"

Aquila glared at him, but he did check the motion.

Hieronimianus took a breath. "Oh, all right. It would be most kind, Centurion, if you would let me borrow--"

But Aquila did not just give him the cloak. No, Aquila sat next to him, curling one great arm around his shoulders, nearly pulling him into his lap. It was warm, all right, but it was also strangely intimate, and Hieronimianus could feel everything in him that cared about propriety and rightness begin to panic. He had been in the army long enough to hear all the jokes about Greeks, he knew he was pretty, and he certainly did not need to give fuel to any rumors.

He felt himself tense up, and Aquila harrumphed. "Another problem?"

He certainly wasn't going to explain this one to his primus pilus. "I -- no. I am perfectly well."

Aquila pulled him closer still, rubbing at Hieronimianus' cold-stiffened limbs, and Hieronimianus twisted away, flinching. And then Aquila sighed. "Your virtue is safe with me. I only want you to be warm."

He thought for an instant, from the way Aquila had said it, that if he asked -- had not Aquila just said he should ask, if he wanted a thing? -- that there could be more. But he did not know how to ask, nor if he should, so he let the moment pass and relaxed against Aquila's strong shoulder.

"Thank you," he murmured. And then, all at once, the entire situation struck him, and he started to laugh. He wondered if it was the cold.

"Sir?"

"Can you really believe we're looking for a centaur, Aquila?" He pulled the cloak up to his neck. "How did I talk you into this? Do you think we'll find it?"

He glanced up, and Aquila was smiling. "You ordered me, if you'll remember."

"So I did."

The crackling flames lit Aquila's thoughtful profile. He was not the sort of man who had ever been handsome, Hieronimianus thought, but something about his features was pleasant to look upon, nonetheless.

"I couldn't say. But it will be interesting, I think, to see what we can find."

As Hieronimianus finally ate the barley bannock, he was aware of a warm, peaceful contentment spreading all through him, and he wondered if even centaurs could be better than that.

* * *

"So," he said, briskly, stamping out the last of the fire's ashes in the morning light. "If we are indeed serious about this quest for a centaur, I think it would be folly to attempt to wound it." He remembered the stories, after all. They were warriors. Chiron himself had trained Achilles. "At most we should content ourselves with seeing it. But I think we will need some kind of distraction, some kind of trap--"

"Yes?"

He turned to see Aquila, sitting cross-legged in the grasses with ropes coiled in his lap. He was -- he was knotting them together. He was intent on his work, squinting at the weave of it, now picking up a section and testing it for strength.

"I see you thought of that already." He ought to be angry, abashed. He suspected that a few days ago he would have been. Instead he was only pleased that Aquila had made a head start.

Aquila lifted his head and grinned. "I'm right here with you, sir."

* * *

The trap had been laid. There was nothing to do but wait to see if anything would take the bait. Aquila had with him a few pieces of fruit, the early apples of the season, and these they had baited the trap with. Surely even centaurs liked apples. Horses liked apples. Men liked apples. Were they not both?

The only problem, really, was that the thicket they were lying in was damned uncomfortable. It did not help that they were both smeared with as much dirt as possible. The tales had not said whether centaurs could smell you nearby as a horse could, but they had not wanted to take any chances.

And they waited.

And they waited.

"You don't think," Hieronimianus ventured, "that it might simply avoid the traps? A centaur is not a dumb beast. Might it think it strange that there are apples about?"

"I am not sure it matters what it thinks," said Aquila, after a pause. "Or whether it takes the apple. It only has to come close enough to the apple, and then we will have it snared. Of course, it can get itself out again easily enough, I am sure, but if we can only delay it, we can at least see it."

"If it exists."

Aquila smiled and tilted his head; it could have been yes or no equally well. "Don't make me do all the believing for both of us."

* * *

There was no centaur.

Day passed into evening, and evening to night. 

Aquila insisted on the first watch, and Hieronimianus was roused by him in the middle of the night to take the second, until dawn.

"Anything? Anything?" he asked, sleepily.

Aquila shook his head. "Not yet."

And with that he lay down and was asleep almost instantly; no doubt it was a skill the common soldiers cultivated, to be able to sleep at any time. He himself was hardly used to this business of being on watch and awake half the night. But Aquila was, and Aquila had assumed he would take his share of the watch. It was only fair, he supposed.

Hieronimianus yawned. If only he weren't so tired.

There was no movement by the traps. Restless, he rolled over onto his back. The trees did not shade them, not in this little glade, and the night sky was clear, the stars shining down. He picked out the archer and grinned up at it. Now, there was a centaur for you. Perhaps it too was watching them. And the creature would hardly come if it knew they were watching.

He could have sworn he was awake, that he never once drifted off, but when he came back to himself with a start the first touches of dawn were beginning to brighten in the east. The forest was pale in the half-light, the grass damp with dew.

Then something shifted between the trees.

Without moving, he couldn't quite see it. There was a flash of dark hide, and then a careful hoof, set in the gap between branches. He could not quite comprehend the scale of it at this angle. A deer? A horse? He could not tell if it was cloven, even.

And he could not wake Aquila, for, whatever it was, it would run if he moved. He could not even prop himself up for a better look.

They stayed there, Hieronimianus and his mystery, for long frozen moments. It had to be a horse. It had to be. What if it wasn't? And all at once he _knew_ , the immensity of the knowledge spreading over him, and it was true, it was all true, gods and all these creatures walked the land--

Just as suddenly as it had come, it was gone: hoofbeats pounded into the dirt, and Hieronimianus leapt to his feet to see if he could catch it leaving.

There was no sign.

But it hadn't triggered the trap. And the apple was gone.

"Aquila."

He waited for Aquila to waken, to move, to stretch, but Aquila only opened his eyes, the rest of him remaining perfectly still. "Yes?"

"I think," he said, hardly believing the words, "I saw, just now -- I think I saw -- it couldn't have been a horse. It took the apple. It left."

"So." Aquila raised an eyebrow.

He wanted to laugh, perhaps, or cry. He didn't know what he felt, nor why. He wanted to fall into someone's arms and be reassured of the state of the world. He did not think Aquila would do that. On the other hand, he hadn't asked. And Aquila had said, if there was a thing he needed...

"Aquila? Can I--" He didn't even know how to finish the sentence. "Can you just--?"

He must have looked strange, indeed, for after a long pause Aquila nodded. "Whatever you need, sir."

"Just come here. Please. Stand with me."

It was thus that his centurion embraced him, as the sun rose, as the world became real again, and they stood there, unmoving in it, two friends, side by side.

"You know," said Aquila, grinning, "in twenty years we'll look back on this, and we'll say, 'Do you remember that time we went hunting a centaur?'"

"Twenty years?" To Hieronimianus this seemed an unimaginably long time. "And you on your deathbed?"

Aquila scoffed. "Do I look that old? No, I will be enjoying a comfortable retirement, and you--" he waved a hand about, in a broad sweep of prophecy-- "you will be a legate. You can visit me on leave," he added, magnanimously. "Bring wine."

Hieronimianus laughed. "We'll see what happens, old man."


End file.
